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The UM Rosenstiel School researchers used a state-of-the-art climate model to investigate a pattern of temperature change in a swath of water in the subpolar North Atlantic region, called a warming hole, that has been cooling over the past century. Scientists have considered this cooling a result of a slowdown of a planetary-scale ocean circulation, called the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC), that transports energy to the North Atlantic. "However, our study shows the warming hole during the past century is unlikely due to a slowdown of the AMOC. Instead, the warming hole is actually a consequence of human driven...

Posted on April 26, 2012 by Anthony Watts From the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences“Warming hole” delayed climate change over eastern United StatesApril 26, 201250-year model suggests regional pollution obscured a global trend CONTACT: Caroline Perry, (617) 496-1351 Cambridge, Mass. – April 26, 2012 – Climate scientists at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have discovered that particulate pollution in the late 20th century created a “warming hole” over the eastern United States—that is, a cold patch where the effects of global warming were temporarily obscured.While greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane warm the...

While greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane warm the Earth's surface, tiny particles in the air can have the reverse effect on regional scales. "What we've shown is that particulate pollution over the eastern United States has delayed the warming that we would expect to see from increasing greenhouse gases," says lead author Eric Leibensperger (Ph.D. '11), who completed the work as a graduate student in applied physics at SEAS. "For the sake of protecting human health and reducing acid rain, we've now cut the emissions that lead to particulate pollution," he adds, "but these cuts have caused the...